anchor-chart &laquo; WordPress.com Tag Feedhttp://en.wordpress.com/tag/anchor-chart/
Feed of posts on WordPress.com tagged "anchor-chart"Sun, 02 Aug 2015 22:29:45 +0000http://en.wordpress.com/tags/enhttps://taraandkate.wordpress.com/2015/07/27/differentiation-in-writing-through-choice/
Mon, 27 Jul 2015 07:00:00 +0000taraandkatehttps://taraandkate.wordpress.com/2015/07/27/differentiation-in-writing-through-choice/carol ann tomlinson, the guru on differentiation, teaches that you can differentiate the content, process, and product of what you’re teaching. in writing workshop, student choice plays a role in each of these areas.

before diving into some examples, a little bit about the value of choice. as adults, it’s easy to forget the interest and autonomy that’s gained from the opportunity to make a choice for ourselves. making choices is just a part of reality, of our daily lives for adults. for kids, choice has some novelty because so much of their lives is decided for them.

our opinion is that kids become more invested and engaged, and feel more respected, when they’re given the chance to make choices. and while certainly not everything is open for discussion in our room, we think it’s important to purposefully consider where there might be room for kids to make choices, and then honor the choices they make.

choice in content. this is sort of the heart of writing workshop: kids are choosing what they want to write about. of course, we teach strategies in each genre as a way to support students in finding a writing topic (e.g. thinking of people, places, and things close to our heart when we’re writing personal narratives), but the students are the ones making the choice about what to write about.

an example of a page in our writer’s notebook from gathering a list of ideas to write about. each writer has his own individual list of writing territories – topics he could return to over and over, no matter the genre.

choice in process. when we teach a strategy in a mini-lesson, it’s rare that we say that everyone is trying that strategy that day. there are times when everyone needs to try it (like on the day that we devote to choosing an idea – we’ll typically ask the whole class to choose that day to help move them along in the writing process), but usually, kids are making choices about how they move through the writing process. so, our language during our mini-lesson sounds more like, “this is something you may decide to do today,” and we might add on some qualifiers to help students a little bit more (e.g. “if you feel like your draft is the best first draft it can be, then you might be ready to think about revision, and so you might decide to try the strategy we learned today…”)

an anchor chart reminding students of the writing process. we author the chart in front of the students as we move through our first unit of study. the post-its are student initials to show where in the writing process the students are for their independent project. (chart structure courtesy of shana frazin.)

most of our kids need some support in moving to next steps of the writing process; the openness of moving through the writing process at their own pace, when the reality is there are deadlines for the beginning and end of units of study that we need to meet as a class, is too much for fourth graders, in our experience. students do have more say in timing and pacing of each part of the process in their independent projects. in the unit of study we’re working through as a class, though, students choose which strategies they’ll try at each part of the process, and move more at pace through the process as our mini lessons progress (i.e. most students end up doing some type of revision work for three days if we’re teaching three days worth of revision mini-lessons, but they may not do each strategy we teach. some students may spend more than one day on a single strategy and others may return to old revision strategies).

our anchor charts are extremely important for students to be supported in this work, as they act as a record of teaching and also provide a scaffold for students when trying the work independently. our anchor charts make it more likely that our students will be successful with a strategy when they’re trying it a few days later (or even a few months later, since we’ll return to old anchor charts when they fit with our current unit – during realistic fiction, for example, we’ll return to the revision strategies we learned during personal narrative, since both are narrative genres).

an example of an anchor chart in writing. we try to make the charts transferrable, so that this isn’t specific to a single unit of study, but instead, can be used across a genre (narrative, in this example). the strategy is listed with some examples that students can look at or borrow (they peel off & restock to the chart) to support their independent work.

most years we have some students who need more structure than having the choice of strategies be totally theirs. often, these are students who have difficulty being productive in writing workshop or are reluctant to try strategies on their own. for these students, we differentiate by asking them to first try the strategy taught during the mini-lesson that day, and then moving on to other strategies of their choice, using the class anchor charts. in this way, they’re provided with some structure – and have just been given a model of how the strategy looks during the mini-lesson, so they’re set up to be successful – as well as the opportunity to choose strategies for themselves. we’ve found this to be an effective way to support students who struggle with the independence of writing workshop.

choice in product. our class units of study end in a published piece, which students have the choice to handwrite or type. if students choose to handwrite their piece, they have a choice in the type of paper they use, with different width of lines and with or without a box for illustrations. students have choice in how they publish their independent projects, which are ongoing across the year, and also how they share their piece during some of our celebrations.

during our poetry celebration, for example, we often do poem performances. students choose one of their own published poems or a published mentor poem that influenced their own poetry writing to share at the celebration. students then choose how they’ll share their poem – will they read it? create a piece of artwork to accompany the poem? write music to be played as they read the poem? act the poem out? bake something related to the poem?

in our celebrations for narrative pieces, we have tried letting students choose a golden line that they share either orally or by marking it in some way and telling why they are proud of this line. this gives students an opportunity to highlight a part of their writing that they’re particularly proud of and gives us an opportunity to notice the purposeful moves students are making as writers.

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Mon, 29 Jun 2015 12:12:29 +0000taraandkatehttps://taraandkate.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/strategy-lesson-reading-standard-4-literature/reading anchor standard 4, a craft and structure standard, states that students will be able to “interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyzing how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.”

this work will likely require multiple modelings and coaching students through the work, and read aloud is a great place to start with it. for a possible progression of how this could go, see the post about gradually releasing responsibility.

we believe strongly in creating scaffolds, modeling using them, making them accessible to students, and celebrating when they’re used. students who don’t need them aren’t likely to use them (for long, anyway; they may use them at first, but will likely quickly drop it because they don’t need it), and those students who do need them will feel empowered by their success with using them.

while there are certain scaffolds we give more individually or to small groups, one scaffold that we’ve found successful to use with the whole-class is charts created in front of the students, during mini-lessons, with post-its or removable examples of the work for students to take back to their seat and use*. for example:

an anchor chart co-created with our kids across a unit of study that focused on close reading. all of the colored post-its are examples or phrases the students can take to their seat to use as a scaffold during their independent reading.

a possible teaching point, for a mini-lesson or a strategy lesson, for standard 4 could be: readers know that authors choose their words purposefully, and so they read closely by paying attention to the words an author uses to describe a character. they use these words to think about the author’s purpose, what meaning or image the author was creating through those words.

to model this work, you could read aloud from a shared text (even more powerful if the modeling includes re-reading a part of the shared text, or reading it aloud for the first time and then going back, so that the students see the work and power of re-reading), listing words (we suggest choosing either verbs OR adjectives for the modeling, and thinking aloud about this choice) that are used for one specific character. then, look over your words, thinking aloud about which of the words fit together, and maybe starring those. finally, you can use a phrase (written on a post-it on the class chart, perhaps) like, maybe (the author) used these words to show/give me the idea that/make me think…

if the class were reading aloud dragon slayers’ academy: the new kid at school, you could focus on studying gorzil, the dragon. you might focus on verbs used to describe gorzil’s actions, listing verbs like: boomed, poked, blazed, rose, dripped. then, looking over those verbs, you might star “boomed, blazed, and rose” because you see a way that they fit together, and then finally write or think aloud something like, “maybe kate mcmullan (the author) chose these words to make me think that gorzil is a mighty and loud dragon.”

*we’ve also found that photos of the charts or parts of the charts that are uploaded to a google drive account and accessible on a class set of ipads work just as well.

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Tue, 09 Jun 2015 02:06:33 +0000taraandkatehttps://taraandkate.wordpress.com/2015/06/09/close-reading-informational-texts-like-a-writer/one of our favorite writing strategies is using mentor texts to improve the quality of writing. who better to teach us about writing than published writers?

the possibilities for using mentor texts are endless as they can be used for narrative, informational and opinion writing. in this post, we’ll focus on using mentor texts for informational writing.

while we know that narrative writers have unique writing styles, the writing styles of informational writers are unique as well.

student informational writing can often sound like a restating of facts; in others words, boring and dry. but if you read the writing of the best informational authors with a writer’s lens, you’ll see the characteristics that make this writing interesting to read. just take a look at the work of seymour simon.

so how does this work of reading an informational text like a writer look in our classroom?

we start this work by beginning a chart that lists the kinds of details that informational writers use to teach about their topic. (this list isn’t all-inclusive, but is instead includes the craft moves that are most appropriate for our students, and the ones on which our teaching will focus.) this chart is an important scaffold because it guides students in noticing what they might look for within an informational text. the first column – type of detail – is what we create together before our inquiry work begins. we also include an example of each type of detail from a text. (in the photo below, the examples of each detail that we’ve preemptively added to the chart are the pieces of paper that are on white paper and come from books in our class library. we use these to explicitly teach each type of detail through explain and example.)

next, we determine how we will group students. in the past, we’ve thought about the complexity level of each author’s collection of texts and placed students in homogeneous groups according to reading level. this means readers would be assigned to an author according to reading level. we also see value in heterogenous groups chosen by interest, in which higher level readers can be supportive to lower level readers in more complex texts.

groups are given a text set collection of several books by the same author that they will explore over the course of several days. using the anchor chart with types of details, students will search for these particular types of details within the texts by their author, dividing their charts into the different kinds of details/craft moves and placing the examples they find within each section.

when we reconvene as a class, we complete the second column of our class anchor chart by adding some examples that students discovered within their texts to our class chart. we’ve found the most success by asking groups to write some examples on a post-it that they’ll share with the class during the share and add to the chart then. it works well if you make sure each group is responsible for two types of details, so that each detail has a few examples, found by different groups (and, therefore, different authors).

mentor text examples allow students the chance to see how something can be done, while also enabling students to imagine the possibilities for their own writing and scaffolds them toward trying it in their own writing.

looking across a piece of student writing that has limited punctuation and few or no paragraphs can make writing difficult to understand even if the content and ideas are strong. we know that conventions are important if our purpose is to share our writing with readers, but how can we help students to recognize the importance of using conventions consistently when writing?

the mechanics and conventions of writing are, arguably, not the most exciting topics in writing, although some resources have approached this subject in witty and interesting ways.

we’ve found using an inquiry approach when learning is one of the best ways to help students take ownership of their learning and to let students construct their own meaning rather than what we’ve imparted. one place that we’ve found inquiry to be effective is in having students think about writing conventions including punctuation, capitalization and paragraphing.

if we’ve decided to target punctuation use as a learning target within a unit, it may look something like this:

step 1: use a current on demand writing piece to assess student needs for punctuation. for example, if you notice four students who all seem to have sentences that go on forever without any sign of ending punctuation, place them in a group to study use of periods. if you have another three students who are using end punctuation perfectly fine, you may want to place them in a group to study more unusual punctuation like semi colons. (it’s perfectly fine as well to make heterogenous groups, but this is one way that you might use assessments to plan for differentiation.)

step 2: break students into chosen groups with a large piece of chart paper, markers, and several photocopied text excerpts or typed texts that you know contain examples of the punctuation they will be studying. the inquiry question for each group will be to research when and why authors use a particular kind of punctuation. (a note about choosing the texts: the texts should be familiar (i.e. the students have read them once already) so that students are able to focus more on the punctuation than the content of the text. we love using typed copies of picture books that we’ve read aloud or mentor texts that we’ve studied in writing already.)

step 3: groups will look within the texts they are given and will mark the places where they notice the punctuation mark that they are researching by highlighting.

step 4: students will read and think carefully about the author’s purpose for using the punctuation mark before drawing a line from the highlighted part of the text to the outside margin to annotate the author’s purpose for using the punctuation mark.

step 5: the class will come back together to construct a class anchor chart that shares the findings of their inquiry. the first one above is how a chart created during a punctuation inquiry may look and the second one was used to share the findings of a paragraph inquiry. these charts remain posted a resources to use for students. these are resources that are not just created WITH students but BY students!

when it’s time to edit writing (or really anytime in the writing process!), students can and will refer to these charts with mentor examples of how and why to use punctuation and make decisions about punctuating their writing purposefully.

do our students make some errors on where to use a semi colon or overuse commas at times? yes, of course they do. if we’re being honest, so do we. what’s most important to us is that they can name their purpose. if our students are making mistakes because they’re trying out new teaching, then we know they are in the process of learning and that’s what we’re here for – to help guide them through this process.

how do you use inquiry in your reading and writing workshops? how do you help students to punctuate and paragraph with purpose?

Well, we call it R-Controlled because when an R comes after a vowel he is BOSSY and CONTROLLING! He is NOT a good friend and for example: A either says its name “A” or is says the short sound of /a/ (with a breve on top). BUT when it is followed by that CONTROLLING, BOSSY R it changes its name completely as it does when it is behind any other vowel.

We have really been working on fiction vs. non-fiction in kindergarten since we got back from Winter break. These are the anchor charts I created for fiction. I got the clipart a couple years ago on TPT if I am not mistaken. It is for the story retelling rope but I decided to use them in this way this year. I think it is really helping the kids understand the story retelling process.

One thing that I have been trying to get better at is making anchor charts. For reading I am CIM trained (Comprehensive intervention model) and do Guided reading plus and Interactive Writing lessons. Our main focus as CIM teachers this year is relating our lessons back to the Core and what is happening in the general education classroom. Luckily for me I co-teach large group reading and writing in the general education classroom and just pull out to my office during small group reading. Since I am in the classroom during large group and writing and I help with the planning of the gen ed lessons each week I know the focus and can be a little more prepared than those teachers in our building who are not in a general education classroom or pull multiple grade levels.

My students have been struggling with rhyming this year. Some of my groups are also working on word families during the word work and phonemic awareness portions of our lessons. I found this anchor chart on Pinterest and taped it up on my anchor chart bookcase (when they don’t put doors on your shelves and you have limited space you just make do).

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Thu, 25 Dec 2014 01:44:46 +0000Mara Truslowhttps://middleschoolwriter.wordpress.com/2014/12/25/anchor-charts/Take a look at the Anchor Charts page for posters to display in your middle school ELA classroom. These include: sentences starters & phrases for introducing evidence, strategies for reading comprehension, connections to make to texts, how to be specific in writing, and text features of informational texts.

Listening: I’ve been up since the crack of dawn. In between lesson planning, laundry, and Sunday laziness I have been watching Neighbors! Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne are hilarious!

Loving: I am amazed by all of the talented do it yourself costumes that are being posted on social networking sites. My party pooper friends had a costumeless shindig this weekend, however I am totally dressing up next year! Here is a picture of what I wore to class on Friday. Cute and inexpensive to make! Too bad some of my middle schoolers didn’t pick up on the fact that I was a Care Bear. “Are you a rainbow kangaroo?”-7th grader

Cheer bear! 12 sweatshirt and twenty cents for each color felt!

Thinking: Who doesn’t love “fall back” in November? (raises hand) I’ve been up bright and early since 6:45. It is only noon and I already need a nap!

Wanting: I’m not sure about what your fall wardrobe consists of, but mine includes gloves, cheese ball hats, furry winter coats, and scarves already. Too soon, Mother Nature. Too soon. We had a week of sweatshirt weather and I want it back.

Needing: My least favorite part of the changing seasons includes changing the clothes in my closet and storing them for next season. I can’t wear all of the sleeveless blouses and short sleeve cardigans in this 35 degree weather…I need to pull out winter clothes, but I’m not motivated for this day long ordeal. You know what I’m talking about.

Reading: Started reading Eleanor and Park last week and will be wrapping it up next week. I’m reading Mockingjay to prepare for the film release and I’ve started a couple others. I have about 6 books I’m currently reading at once. Terrible, I know, but hopefully I will finish them all before the new year…

I am prepping for a fun filled, intense week of argumentative writing. Here is an updated anchor chart of my argumentative writing chart from last school year. I’ll do another post in upcoming weeks.

Argumentative Writing anchor chart

Happy Sunday,

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Wed, 22 Oct 2014 01:20:51 +0000jenisesextonhttps://jenisesexton.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/the-writing-on-the-wall/One thing I absolutely love is in the middle of an assessment, a student will raise their hand and say, “You forgot to take the charts down.” I respond with a bright smile and whisper, “I know, it’s okay.” A feeling of joy wells up inside of me because its conformation they are using the anchor charts.

If you walk into my classroom the only manufactured posters you’ll find are the one required by administration to post. All other writing on the wall is student thinking from…wait for it…this school year! If you’ve never heard of anchor charts, a brief definition is chart paper housing and displaying the thoughts and strategies of students. Often times, like mine, the charts are created by the teacher, but should ultimately be created by students.

Whether it is after a number talk or during the closing of my lesson, I snap a picture of the thinking and transfer it to an anchor chart and literally hang it up in the classroom. Students are able to view the charts from their seats or walk up to the chart to review and make sense of what they see.

Numbertalks session

Numbertalks Anchor Chart

Anchor Charts

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Sat, 18 Oct 2014 22:45:04 +0000cann8https://diaryofanurbanteacher.wordpress.com/2014/10/18/qar/My QAR anchor chart has been a hit on Pinterest. After 4.5 years of use, I finally decided to update it with orange and blue to match my classroom! Enjoy.

Here is my new and improved QAR chart in orange and blue to match my classroom.

Time to replace this bad boy after 4 years of use! It was a hit on Pinterest when it made its debut a couple years back!

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Fri, 10 Oct 2014 18:48:31 +0000estyreehttps://alaynabellesmom.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/getting-to-the-bones-of-writing/Being home with a sick family today has given me the gift of a little extra time. As both my daughter and father are sleeping at the moment, I’m taking the time to look through my tentative lesson plans and see what interesting ideas pop up and, surprise surprise, I almost immediately had an epiphany.

As we get down to the real meat of writing in the coming nine weeks, my students will need to tap in to prior knowledge in order to really understand how written pieces come together, so that they can write their own (amazing!) pieces. Since we’re in the middle of October, what better way to could there be to start this discussion than to incorporate Science (anatomy), Art, and Writing in a hands on class discussion about the “Bones of a Story”?

Give each student a copy of a paper skeleton pattern (such as this one I found on Pinterest)

Introduce the basics of the skeleton they’re holding, i.e. the arms, legs, skull, spine, etc. and relate it to writing by way of a transition sentence such as “Just as Our Bodies need a Skeleton to build muscles upon, every written piece needs its author to provide similar bones to build words on.”

Then have an ‘open discussion’ (class discussion) about what the ‘bones’ of a good story might be. Tell the students that throughout the discussion they should choose the ‘story bones’ that sound the most important to them, and write them on one of the skeleton’s pieces. At the end of the discussion each student will cut out and assemble their newly formed ‘writer’s skeleton’.

I will be using this in conjunction with an anchor chart of a (Haunted House!) so that all of our thoughts on the bare bones of writing will be recorded, whether or not the students include everything on their skeletons. At the end of the class, we’ll hang their works of art on the back wall with the filled in anchor chart…with 4 classes of 5th graders this should decorate my classroom for Halloween without too much effort!

Though I teach fifth grade, this is a lesson that can be transferred to almost any age group (Even pre-k and kindergarten!) and any subject without too much effort. The best thing about it, in my opinion, is the great opportunity for you, the teacher, to HAVE FUN WITH IT! When you have fun with learning, the students will too. Enthusiasm, much like the cold, is contagious!

I hope that you have fun if you choose to use this idea, and would love to hear how the kids like it!

Have a wonderful weekend!

**My beginning speech to get minds rolling in this activity will be something similar to “Welcome to Ms. Tyree’s House of Horror’ibly Great Writing! Today we will be discussing the basic parts, or BONES, of a good story. Just like our bodies needs the skeletal system to build up into a person, every story needs it’s own basic (skeletal) structure.

Each of you should have a set of pages in front of you (the jointed skeleton pattern). Turn those over and take a look. See how those will fit together to form an articulated skeleton? As we discuss the ‘bones’ of a good story today, I want you to choose your favorite options for a writing skeleton, and put each one of them on one of the bones in front of you. (It does not have to be EVERYTHING that we talk about, JUST THE ONES THAT YOU FEEL STRONGEST ABOUT!)

Any questions? If not, lets go ahead and start with what you think are the basic bones of a story. (At this point I will be opening the floor up for students to begin interacting with me. Depending on the mood, attitude, and behavior in each particular class that day, they may be allowed to come up and write their choices on the board OR I may do all the writing)

Learning the different parts of an apple courtesy of A Cupcake for the Teacher

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Wed, 03 Sep 2014 18:14:48 +0000LowellAcuffhttps://lowellacuff.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/superhero-strategies/Every year I try to have a “theme” in my room and as you saw in my earlier post this year is Super Hero: Super Reader!

I decided to re-vamp my strategy bookmarks and anchors in my room. I’m big into super heroes and I’m hoping the change will be something my students enjoy.

My students will get the book mark (on the left) to take back with them to the classroom or to put in their book bags/book boxes and then the photo on the right are the larger ones hanging on my wall as a reference.

As always, if you ever want copies of any of what I use please let me know. I’m always willing to share. Cheers to all of you kicking off your new school year. Here’s to a SUPER 2014-2015 school year.